NFL owners used Super Bowl week to hand the 49ers the next best thing to a championship: $200 million in financial backing to help pay for the team’s stadium in Santa Clara.

By approving one of the largest contributions to a new stadium in NFL history, the league’s owners on Thursday provided the long-awaited final piece of financing for the $1 billion project.

49ers owner Jed York revealed the deal in a tweet just after the NFL owners’ vote during a meeting in Indianapolis, the city hosting the Super Bowl. The NFL already indicated last year that a 68,500-seat stadium in Santa Clara would be a strong candidate to lure a Super Bowl to the Bay Area.

“With the NFL’s muscle now behind the new stadium, we are moving forward,” said York, who is still hoping to open the stadium as early as 2014. “We’re fully funded for Santa Clara, and we are building a stadium in Santa Clara.”

In a statement, NFL commissioner Roger Goodell called the funding “an important milestone for the 49ers and their fans.”

The NFL kicked in the money from a stadium construction fund re-established as part of last year’s collective bargaining agreement. The amount is the second largest contribution in history from the league for a new stadium. The NFL contributed $300 million for a joint stadium project for the New York Giants and New York Jets, and $150 million for stadiums in Dallas and Indianapolis.

The new so-called “G4” loan program increased the amount of stadium help for any single team from the prior program’s $150 million to $200 million.

Though the NFL has been secretive about how exactly it funds stadiums, the funds come from the league’s general pool of revenue, said Stanford University professor Roger Noll, a sports economist. That fund ran out of money a few years ago but was replenished last year after the league’s huge television deal, and the 49ers stadium is the first to receive money from the new round of financing.

The NFL usually gives a combination of grants and low-interest loans to teams to build stadiums, Noll said, though it’s unclear what exactly the 49ers are getting, and York wouldn’t get into specifics. The 49ers owner, however, rejected characterizing the NFL’s contribution as a straight loan, saying it amounted to “NFL support” for the project, composed of a “fairly intricate” combination that will go toward financing construction of the stadium on a parking lot adjacent to the Great America theme park.

The league benefits from the project because road teams get 40 percent of game day profits, and the Santa Clara stadium stands to be much more lucrative than San Francisco’s Candlestick Park.

There had been speculation the NFL would press the 49ers and Oakland Raiders to share the Santa Clara stadium in order to secure the financing, but York said there is no link to the $200 million contribution. “We’ve been asked to keep the communications open,” said York, adding that he worked out and had lunch with Raiders owner Mark Davis earlier Thursday in Indianapolis.

Amy Trask, the Raiders CEO, declined to comment because she’s tied up with NFL business in Indianapolis, but she has said in the past the team is exploring all options for a new stadium, including the possibility of joining the 49ers.

Santa Clara Mayor Jamie Matthews could barely contain his enthusiasm for the NFL announcement, saying it exceeds the $150 million amount city officials had banked on from the league. “What that does is ensure $200 million in cash that will go directly toward construction of the stadium,” he said.

Nearly two months ago, the 49ers and Santa Clara announced they had secured $850 million in loans from Goldman Sachs, Bank of America-Merrill Lynch and U.S. Bank to finance construction, and a stadium authority has been established to bring in revenues from such things as luxury suites and concessions. Another big piece of revenue to pay off the loan package will come from the team’s ongoing behind-the-scenes effort to sell naming rights to the stadium, which is expected to generate millions of dollars in revenue.

The $200 million from the NFL comes on top of the overall loan package and amounts to the final funding piece.

With the stadium project steamrolling forward, Santa Clara officials did move this week to remove the only potential roadblock, filing a lawsuit to keep stadium opponents from trying to put the project back on the ballot.

The lawsuit, filed in Santa Clara County Superior Court on Monday, is a pre-emptive strike against Santa Clara Plays Fair, the leading anti-stadium group trying to get the issue back before voters. The group tried to put a referendum on the ballot to unravel the deal, citing the loan package as a change in the project’s course, but city officials determined they do not have a legal right to do so.

In the lawsuit, city lawyers are asking a judge to rule that the project can’t be challenged again at the ballot box.

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